Naturalism in science

Have a look at the short (10 min) presentation. I think it explains the scientific approach (in contrast to the religious approach) very well. It’s Sean Carroll’s opening statement from the The Great Debate: Science vs. Religion. You don’t usually see such sensible contributions in a debate.

Normally I don’t like to use words like materialism and naturalism – without careful definition they are too open to misinterpretation. I also think that science is concerned with understanding reality, the real world. Some people use “naturalism” to ring-fence a part of the world (they define as “supernatural”) as immune to investigation. They claim science is limited to the “natural” world.

However, I really like this presentation by Sean Carroll. He is not conceding a “supernatural” part of reality which science is excluded from. Reality itself is natural in his eyes – and that has been shown by all our scientific experiences. As he describes it he tries “to sum up the progress in human understanding that has led us to reject the supernatural and accept that the natural world is all there is.”

I agree with you and Carroll, reality is natural (aka physicalism) and we know it to be so, simple as that.

@ mona:

No one disputes the accommodationist claim that people can compartmentalize science and religion. That is precisely what you illustrate, for example.

The claim is however that the goals, ways and results of science and religion conflicts, in toto. And of course _they have to_, since science is the way to replace belief with fact and religion is movements that aim to replace fact with belief.

To claim that unchanging verses are not contradicted by an investigative method defined by it’s ability to change it’s view according to the accumulation of evidence is simply ludicrous (and demonstrably untrue, anyway)